Don't Keep Me Waiting
by Shashuko the Paisley Maiden
Summary: Deidara's been ordered to clean up the dead Sasori's old room. What happens when he finds the ex-Akatsuki's diary? Sasodei- don't like, don't read.
1. Waiting Alone

"Hey," Hidan said, setting down a cup up Jashin-blessed Irish coffee. "Hasn't Deidara seemed awfully... quiet recently? SInce that f--er Sasori died, I mean."

"He always did search for arguments with that guy..." Konan noted. "He liked getting reactions out him. This usually came to blows, and Deidara would get so badly poisoned that Sasori would have to carry him to the sick bay and force-feed him antidotes, or Sasori getting nearly blown up. But either way, Deidara always _smiled _at the end. Like getting poisoned was worth seeing Sasori's face with an actual expression."

Hidan grinned. "Well," he said, "The asshole did have a --ing great angry face."

"He did," Konan. "But only Deidara ever made him angry enough for us to see it."

...

Deidara stalked down the... corridor... of the cave, pausing at Sasori's room. Pein had told him yesterday to clean the place up, but Deidara had 'accidentally' discovered Sasori's secret diary.

It was the pink, fuzzy kind that had the words 'hands off' across it in cursive writing.

It also had a lock.

Deidara blew up the lock with a spare bit of clay he'd had behind his ear.

Then, he'd started reading. He couldn't put it down-- he hadn't known that Sasori put so much thought into his day. The shock came when Deidara turned the page to May Sixth.

And yes, I'm going to tell you what it says. Even though snooping through people's diaries is impolite and Sasori's private thoughts should not be posted all over the internet since it's not exactly a nice way to treat his memory.

However, this excerpt is slightly integral to the plot, so I'll tell you what it said:

_Dear Diary,_

_Finished fixing Hiruko from when Dei _(strangely, he always called Deidara that in his diaries) _tried to blow him up last week. Seriously, doesn't he know how hard it is to fix a puppet made from human flesh? I have to go out and actually _harvest-- _well, since the chances of anyone besides me of reading this diary are slim to none, I'm not going to continue. I don't like to think about it-- it's nasty business._

_If Dei is reading this, I either decided that showing you how stressed I am after you blow my artwork up, or died. If it's the second one, I bet you finally blew me up. I said something too much, or didn't act quickly enough. Or I died another way. Either way, Pein is probably make you clear the s-- out of my room eventually as you were/are my partner in Akatsuki, and you'll probably blow up the lock or have the key and you'll read this._

_And you'll laugh. You'll laugh so, so hard. The tears will stream down your face and you'll laugh because you think my way of art is wrong. You'll smile and your eyes will light up all big like they do when you blow up large buildings full of screaming people. Except you won't look quite as malicious._

_And I'll wish I was there to see you so happy. I think I'm in love with you, Dei._

_... Waaait. This is MY diary. Why am I writing to Dei? I'm not going to die anyway-- my art is everlasting, and I became my art. And besides, Dei's probably straight. That's why he grows his hair out. It makes him look like that Link guy from those stupid Legend of Zelda games. He probably wants to rescue a princess from an evil scaly monster or something._

_Gee, now I'm all depressed. And I'm going to be depressed next time I happen apon this page. And if Deidara sneak into my room at night and tries to find dirt on me while I'm out, then he'll be depressed. Because he'd only read this if I was somehow dead._

_Hey, Dei, if I'm dead go put a chocolate cake on my grave. Because you made me write this stupid confession you probably don't want to hear._

_Dammit I'm talking to Dei again. I'm not going to die!_

_ -- Akasuna no Sasori, May 6._

Deidara had dropped the diary and sat frozen on the floor for what seemed like a week. Sasori loved him?

Deidara didn't know what to do. He'd fallen in love plenty of times, but he'd never had someone fall in love with him.

What now? Deidara had never even visited the place where Sasori died.

And now, sitting for the second time alone in that dusty room, Deidara knew exactly what he had to do.

He was going to bake the best damn chocolate cake he ever made.

...

Far away, in a rocky gorge where there was once a cave, there was a puppet with red hair and a capsule labeled 'heart' on his chest. There were two puppets besides him, with swords that went through this makeshift atrium.

_Damn it_, the puppet thought, _Is that brat ever going to figure it out? He knows I hate waiting._


	2. Waiting Over

Deidara broke and egg into the bowl carefully, being careful to not get any eggshells into it. He separated the white form the yolks, and mixed the yolks with a bowl of previously mixed wet ingredients.

Konan could swear she'd never seen anyone baking a chocolate cake with such a somber, serious expression before.

"Why the long face?" she asked, walking over to the sink and washing out Hidan's Jashin-blessed-Irish-coffee cup.

"I'm baking a cake," Deidara said quietly. He sifted the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, and started mixing. "For Sasori."

Konan sighed. "Deidara... he won't exactly be able to eat it, will he?"

"Sasori's dead," Itachi added flatly, groping around for the coffee maker.

"I know," Deidara muttered, pouring cake batter into a pan. "But it's the least I can do."

Konan shrugged and swore when she realized that Hidan's coffee mug had coffee remnants caked on at the bottom. Did he ever wash that thing?

...

Eight. Hours. Later:

Deidara huffed, lugging a large chocolate cake out of the oven. He hadn't succeeded in cooking the confection for a short enough amount of time the last three times that day he'd tried baking a cake, so this time it had to work or he would blow up something large and expensive (like a television).

Apprehensively, Deidara sniffed the cake, then let out a sigh of relief. It wasn't burnt, and the toothpick he poked in the center came out clean. He'd done it!

Excited now, Deidara reached for the homemade chocolate-buttercream frosting. Humming, he put the frosting on the cake as smoothly as he could (which was not very smoothly at all) then put some vanilla meringues on the top in a pattern to make it look fancier.

"Wait a second, un," Deidara said to himself. "Why the hell am I decorating the damn thing in the first place? Sasori's dead, he won't be able to eat it."

He shrugged and started peppering the cake with MnM candies. Sasori had liked those, Deidara recalled. By now, he was merely enjoying himself. Decorating things like this was... fun. He'd done a lot of it when he was little.

Wait. How'd he eat in the first place? He was a puppet...

Oh well. He was dead anyway. Did it matter?

"... Why did I _make _the damn thing in the first place?" Deidara whispered to himself. "Sasori-danna... is _gone_, un..."

But, Deidara had a feeling in his gut that still told him that bringing the cake to Sasori's corpse was a good idea.

"Well, if I was that disrespectful to him, and he still loved me..." Deidara put the cake in a flimsy white cardboard box. "... I guess it's the least I can do, un."

Truthfully, Deidara wasn't quite so sure how he felt about Sasori. He'd loved bugging the guy. His reactions were so... explosive. He'd be calm and content one minute, but the instant you insulted his art he'd be going for your neck.

And, sometimes, Sasori had claimed to be too... 'tired' to deal with Deidara's insults in the usual manner. Deidara would stand their glaring at Sasori, and the red-headed puppeteer would go back to whatever puppet he was fixing, while Deidara watched in silence. Eventually, when he saw he couldn't get a rise out of Sasori, he'd roll his eyes and leave the room.

_What if... _Deidara realized, _That was danna's way of trying to make peace? ... Oh, hell. I screwed the whole thing up!_

Deidara made a large bird out of clay and hopped on, holding his cake-filled package tightly. _I was so blind, so stupid. This thing doesn't even begin to make up for the way I treated him..._

...

The wind howled past Deidara's ears, hindering the bird's progress. Deidara clutched the cake box close to his chest and infused more chakra into the bird.

_Almost... there... _Deidara gritted his teeth as a particularly vicious bast of wind hit his flying creation.

"DAMMIT, un!" Deidara screamed to the elements. "I SHOULD'VE MADE THIS THING MORE AERODYNAMIC!"

The wind howled in reply, mocking him, but it quieted down enough that Deidara was going forwards rather than fighting to stay in the same place.

"Thanks, un," Deidara murmured, casting his eyes upwards. He didn't really believe in God, but if there was one, Deidara owed him big time.

Slowly, a rocky clearing came into view on the ground below him. Deidara peered down at it, and as it got closer, he noticed it was littered with bodies, or rather, puppets.

"Danna!" Deidara whispered, relief flooding his system. "I'm almost there, un... maybe, since you wanted this cake, it'll help you rest in peace."

After five minutes that seemed like an eternity, Deidara reached the clearing and landed the bird.

There was Sasori. A sword was sticking through his chest, through a compartment labeled 'heart' in neatly written kanji.

Trembling, Deidara reached the statue that his partner had become, setting the cake down in front of him and kneeling before the stationary puppet.

"Why?" Deidara whispered to no one. "W-Why un? If you loved me, why didn't you t-tell me?" he was shaking now, but he got up an pulled the blades out of Sasori's heart.

"It's--it's your fault, un." Tears were collecting in Deidara's eyes. "F-for putting your heart in such an obvious place..." He held Sasori's body to himself and cried. "DAMMIT, un? Why did your grandma have to be such a psycho bitch? When you loved me all along?"

_For putting your heart in such an obvious place..._

Deidara froze. "Wait a second, un." He set Sasori down on a rock and looked at the heart-box. There was a trickle of red liquid that had mostly congealed down it, but...

"Danna was too smart to be that stupid. He would have moved his heart someplace less easy to reach..." Deidara sniffed the box. His eyes widened, and he gasped.

"That's not blood!"

Like moving through molasses, Sasori's head rolled up so to meet his gaze the the other's.

Sasori smirked. "No," he said. "It isn't."


	3. Waiting to Tell

Sasori stood up, his joints making creaking noises.

"Pein-san said..." Sasori sighed, stretching his puppet body, "To pretend to die fighting if I fought anyone after the jinchuuriki was dealt with, and wait until he sent someone to get me. I assume that's why you're here?"

"No, actually!" Deidara yelled angrily. "I thought you were _dead, _un! Leader-san said to clean your room out so Tobi could use it, and I sort of... read... your diary." He trailed off embarrassedly. "I um... baked you a chocolate cake, un. Not sure if you're able to eat it..."

"You read my diary?"

"Well, yeah, un. Umm..." Deidara suddenly found it impossible to look Sasori in the eye. "So... is it true, un? What you wrote?"

Sasori sighed. "Yes, brat. I really do have an affinity for the Pipettes over the Spice Girls."

"That's not what I was talking about, un! Do you love me?!?" Heat rose to Deidara's face, and he looked at his feet. "Or did I spend eight hours baking a cake for a joke?"

Sasori froze (heh. sasor-ice. heheh.).

"Oh..." the puppeteer mumbled, "Iwaskindofhopingyouwouldn'treadtgatpart."

"Well, I did, un," Deidara spat. "So, what're you gonna do about it, un?"

Sasori stood up. "Nothing."

Deidara glared. "I go to all that trouble, un... and you're gonna do _nothing_?"

"Look, brat," Sasori sighed. "You don't love me back, right? So there's no point in my pursuing you. I owe you a favor, I suppose, because you did bake me a cake..."

Deidara looked at the cake-box, which he'd left on the ground. "I did, un, didn't I?" he chuckled. "But it was pointless... you can't eat anyway, can you? You're a puppet."

"I can 'taste'," Sasori explained. "Anything I eat goes into a box in my shoulders. I can't 'digest' the food, though. So I don't eat all that often..."

He held his arms out. "C'mon, brat," he sighed. "If you bothered to bring me a cake, I should at least taste it."

Deidara handed Sasori the box, an unexpected feeling of nervousness welling up inside the blonde.

Sasori opened the box and used a Swiss Army knife procured from... Deidara wasn't sure where... to cut himself a slice.

The knife attachment on the Swiss Army knife was switched with a fork attachment, and Sasori slowly took a bite.

He smirked. "You seriously out an effort into this, didn't you."

"... I did," Deidara admitted, feeling very embarrassed for no clear reason at all. "It probably tastes like crap anyway, but I tried... so you can't say I didn't do my best, un."

"Nah..." Sasori said. "It's okay... I'm glad you made the effort."

Deidara suddenly found he was pleased with himself. _What the hell, un? Am I suddenly bipolar or something? I think I've felt, like, five different emotions in the past minute! Maybe I'm fatigued from baking that cake, un...'_

Sasori swallowed the bite of cake he had been working on, and stabbed his slice once again with the fork. "You want some of this?"

"Nah, I'm good, un," Deidara chuckled. "Already licked the bowl. Chef's Rights."

"... 'Chef's Rights'?" Sasori raised a wooden eyebrow.

"I made the pastry, so I get to eat the batter," Deidara explained.

Sasori blinked. "Isn't there some sort of disease you can get for eating raw eggs?"

"Yeah," Deidara said, "So? I'm in Akatsuki, un. It's not like my life expectancy is that long anyway. Besides... I've been consuming cookie dough and cake batter since I was old enough to digest it properly. Why would it hurt me now, un?"

"Just because you've survived this far doesn't mean your chances have gone down," Sasori said. "Don't risk it."

Deidara stuck out his tongue (the one in his head) at Sasori and scooped up a large handful of cake with his hands, shoving the cake unceremoniously into his face.

When Deidara finished eating, he licked some spare cake crumbs off the palm of his hand.

"... Deidara?" Sasori ventured. "You're licking your hand."

Deidara looked up. "...And, un?"

"And... you've got mouths on your hands so... Isn't that..."

Deidara rolled his eyes and licked his palm again, exaggeratedly. "I don't think of them that way, un. It's about the same as licking my lips on the mouth that they belong to."

"I guess that makes sense..." Sasori said.

"Yeah, un," Deidara laughed. "Hidan doesn't get it though. Whenever I do _anything_ with my hands, he goes '_oooh, kinky, Deidara,_' and I whack him upside the head with Kakuzu's ledger."

"... Why do I not find that surprising?" Sasori sighed. "You have such a temper, brat..."

"I have a name, un!" Deidara yelled.

Sasori smirked. "And?"

"Use it!" Deidara spat.

"Use what?" Clearly, Sasori was looking to die for real.

"My name!" Deidara grabbed Sasori by the shoulders and shook him. "SAY MY NAME!"

The blonde stopped shaking Sasori and gave him one of his better glares.

Sasori nodded, startled, not being able to keep from noticing how very close Deidara's face was to his.

Deidara brought Sasori's face closer, cutting the distance by about two thirds.

"Say it," Deidara said quietly. It was not anger that shone in his eyes this time, but hurt. "Use my name..."

"D-Deidara," Sasori said haltingly. He'd never actually uttered the name aloud, save to whisper it to himself when he was alone.

"Say it again," Deidara whispered, a strange look coming over his face. "Say it..."

His face loomed closer.

"Deidara," Sasori said, feeling a warmth spread from the part of his body where he really kept his heart.

Closer. "Again."

"_Deidara._"

"Again..." Closer still.

"Dei--" But Sasori could speak no more, for another pair of lips had found their way to his own. His eyes widened, then closed, and the only thing in the world was Deidara.

Deidara's hands, still grasping Sasori's shoulders. Deidara's hair, running through Sasori's fingers. Deidara's lips, soft and warm against his own.

Sasori wrapped his arms around the other man, holding him tightly. Breaking apart the kiss, he whispered:

"I love you, Deidara. More than I can say... more than I can show."

Deidara smiled awkwardly. "Well, un... I'm not sure I can say I feel exactly the same way, but I certainly don't hate you _quite_ as much as I let on."

"That's a start," Sasori chuckled. "That's a start."

"... Danna, un?" Deidara grinned uncertainly.

"Yes, Deidara?"

"I do my hair like Link because he's _gay._"


End file.
